


i've known the warmth of your doorways

by beeclaws



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety, Character Study, Chronic Pain, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Feelings, Fluff and Angst, Holding Hands, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, M/M, Mental Health Issues, One Shot, Self-Worth Issues, Set in Episodes 159-160 | Scottish Safehouse Period (The Magnus Archives), internalized ableism, uhhh hard to tag self-critical reflections on whether one is deserving of comfort & relief from pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25939336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beeclaws/pseuds/beeclaws
Summary: 'I’m always in pain,Jon wants to say, even as he dismisses the thought as melodramatic. Between his growing collection of old wounds and scar tissue, the supernatural hunger for statements that hasn’t been truly satiated in months, and the unpredictable aches and strains his body threw off day by day long before he ever set foot in the Institute, some level of pain and discomfort follows Jon wherever he goes now. He is used to being in pain. He’s not used to someone holding his hand as he suffers through it.'Jon catalogs the comforts he receives, and wonders how long he will be allowed to keep them.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 27
Kudos: 303





	i've known the warmth of your doorways

**Author's Note:**

> Title from ‘It Will Come Back’ by Hozier (bc this whole thing is so self-indulgent that why not)
> 
> This was a somewhat difficult one to tag/warn for - while self-harm isn't depicted, there's definitely self-neglect and indifference to one’s own injuries, being in a headspace where it’s hard to feel deserving of care, which felt related enough that I wanted to mention it. Also a brief disordered eating mention and descriptions of a physical experience of anxiety including breathlessness

Jon spends a lot of time mentally cataloguing, once they’re settled into the safehouse. Appropriate for an archivist, if not an Archivist, since the things he catalogs have little to do with fear, excepting the fear that always comes from holding someone close and hoping they will remain.

He catalogs Martin, for the most part. Martin who stands steady when once he would have demurred. Martin who, against all odds, claims to love Jon in the present tense. 

He catalogs the bad parts, too. The wound left by Peter Lukas - left by all the things before Peter, too, then torn and torn because what else could he do, who was left to cling to even from afar, what was the point in trying when it always - no. Jon has promised not to Know these things, as best he can. So he watches without Watching, tries to ease what he can while painfully aware of his own clumsiness. 

Mostly, despite himself, Jon catalogs Martin’s acts of care towards him. Jon is dazzlingly aware that he’s been the recipient of more comfort and tenderness in the past three weeks than he has in the past three years. There are glows, here and there, in his memories before Scotland - Daisy, Georgie, his grandmother. Moments when he was held like something precious. In comparison, everything after he and Martin come together at last is a never-ending floodlight. 

And as much as he hates admitting it, he’s needed comfort. More so than makes any kind of sense to him, in this house chosen for its protection and remove, in this time that is the closest thing to an ‘after’ they’ve had in years. He has Martin, and he’s alive. That should be enough. 

And yet: it begins in his throat. A lump, a tightening, a paralysis that still allows him to draw breath, but makes him constantly, dizzyingly aware with every in and out breath that his next moment of relief is not guaranteed. 

From his throat, it spreads outward - a weight on his chest that he can’t quite call _crushing_ , not when he spent days in embrace of the Buried, but the threat of being crushed. It’s like a check engine light for his whole respiratory system, never allowing him to forget that no matter how much air he gets, something is _wrong_ and at any moment it could get worse.

Outwards it goes - his eyes twitch like something is ever-darting at the periphery of his vision, his joints tighten and ache more even than usual and, worst of all, he cannot truly enjoy the gift of Martin’s presence, can’t devote himself to bickering about cereal or listening to the steady thrum of rainfall together when his ability to breathe comfortably seems to wax and wane at random. 

Jon tries to understand this new failure of his body in the hopes that that understanding will allow him to tidy it cleanly away. He starts with the constant in these past turbulent years, the story he has read aloud a hundred times - that some power has marked him out and is toying with him, making a meal of his terror. There is a reason he struggles to explain the sensation without reference to the Buried, after all.

He dismisses this for two reasons - first, there is nothing he has come into contact with in the past few weeks that Martin hasn’t also experienced, and Martin insists he hasn’t felt anything similar to the vague descriptions Jon has offered. Martin explains that his anxiety has always been more head and stomach based, or occasionally in shaking extremities - a fluttering, a restlessness, an impermanence driven by shame - and Jon squeezes his hand in thanks and comfort even as he tries to ignore the implications of that word. 

The Buried in particular always seemed to take its joy from a multitude of victims, all crushed down into the same struggling mass, not one to single people out in the way of the Hunt or the Lonely. If there was something wrong with the house, something nearby drawing in the realm of the Choke, there’s no reason for it to target Jon alone.

The second reason, more persuasive but less palatable, is that Jon suspects he is far beyond being harmed in this way by some passing artifact of terror. Minor horrors fall below him in the pecking order, and while he has not exactly been a loyal servant of the Eye of late, his longevity is inked into his being now, as he is reminded each time a paper-cut or slip of a kitchen knife draws only the smallest bead of blood before the skin reasserts itself.

If not another power then, perhaps withdrawal from his own, yet another side effect of being starved of live statements. Only if that were the case, it ought to be worsening over time, easing a little with the old statements Basira sends before building to a peak as he awaits the next delivery. This particular agony seems indifferent to the terror of others, and yet somehow that doesn’t make Jon feel any more human.

Mundane physical causes provide little more in the way of explanations. Jon wonders briefly if he’s allergic to something they’re eating and just hasn’t noticed - but there’s no fluctuation with mealtimes, no improvement when he surreptitiously reduces his diet down to the occasional bowl of cereal for several days, until Martin’s gentle concern becomes too much to bear. Environment doesn’t seem to matter, either. He can lose his breath in the local Tesco just as easily as in their small haven.

That, unfortunately, seems to leave Jon with only psychological explanations. Jon knows that if someone told him this story, he’d say the same thing. Lost breath fairly straightforwardly signaled panic, only Jon has seen people have panic attacks. He’s sat with Daisy while she was wracked by them in the aftermath of the coffin, and it isn’t a subtle experience. Panic attacks hit people like a speeding van - Jon, in comparison, feels like he’s being dragged along under the wheels of a bike for miles on end. Less severe, but far more long-lasting.

Still, this is at least an explanation Jon has some idea of how to test, so one afternoon while Martin has gone into town, he locks himself in the bathroom, sits cross-legged on the tiled floor, and deliberately hyperventilates. He’s been called repressed enough times in his life to think it plausible that what he’d been experiencing was the effects of a spell of panic pushed down before it could be allowed to fully manifest, and perhaps if he just started the process himself, he’d come through the other side and get some relief.

Instead, by the time his legs are aching from sitting on the hard floor, all Jon has achieved is making himself dizzy and miserable. Gasping for air felt a little more natural than breathing normally, at least, but it’s hard to maintain for more than a few minutes, and the choked _not-enough-not-enough_ feeling is still waiting for him when he’s done.

Jon fails to understand his experiences, and fails equally to tidy them away. It is hard to hide from the only other occupant of their small borrowed home, and in truth Jon has missed Martin too much to want to hide from him, even to spare him this. Martin sees, and Jon makes the mistake of admitting that physical contact did help ground him during these episodes, even if it didn’t shorten or prevent them.

“It’ll be _hours,_ Martin,” he protested as Martin settled in next to him, one arm around his shoulders, a hand in his stroking comforting circles across his palm. “You can’t just - it’s _fine_.”

“Oh, however will I go on,” Martin teased. “Never mind the years under the thumb of some evil fear god - the real tragedy of my life is a cuddle that drags on a bit.”

Jon had glared as he settled into the warmth of Martin’s embrace, which would have to do as far as protests went, because it really was the only thing that could fill his mind completely enough to almost replace the terror of barely breathing. 

It had been a while, then, since Jon had borne one of these episodes on his own. Technically he wasn’t alone now, but Martin was firmly asleep next to him, and Jon drew the line at waking him because his lungs had decided to malfunction at random _again._ Instead, after shifting and mumbling experimentally a few times to ensure Martin really is deeply asleep, he delicately lifts Martin’s hand from the mattress and lays it on his own chest. 

Jon lies in the dark and waits for the warmth to soothe him. It’s still...nice. Still Martin’s hand, a pleasant weight to contrast the strange pulling pressure in his chest, but minutes pass and Jon isn’t any calmer. Martin lies there unaware, his sleeping face entirely neutral, reminding Jon of months of forced neutrality, Martin tightly buttoned away behind business attire he’d never have bothered with before, trying not to meet Jon’s eyes on the rare occasions they spoke. 

Jon frowns and scrubs a hand over his face. That’s all over, now. Martin made a choice, and he chose him. If Martin were awake, he’d likely be offering this contact by choice, probably be teasing him just enough to distract him from his own thoughts. Somehow, without that - the active intention behind the touch, the whispered ‘shh, love, it’s alright,’ - Martin’s hand is just...a hand. Heat without warmth, like the tea he’d make for himself with Martin hiding away up in Elias’s office. 

Gently, Jon moves Martin’s hand back onto the bed, dismissing a brief urge to press a kiss to that hand in silent apology, and slips out of the room. The windowsill at the end of their upstairs landing (and how quickly did he come to think of this house as ‘theirs,’ Jon wonders) is just wide enough for him to perch on, knees tucked into his chest. It’s too cloudy for stars, but Jon draws close to the freezing glass regardless. The clouding of the glass before his face seems to mock him - _see, you’re breathing fine._ The function has been fulfilled, unambiguously. Never mind the miserable ache of it. 

Jon doesn’t doze so much as drift. He keeps his eyes open, fixed on nothing. The cold aches where he’s pressed against the glass, shoulder-elbow-knee, but he doesn’t pull back. _Focus on what you can control,_ he can remember hearing once, in what might have been a self-help book but was more likely an advert for a self-help book Jon never purchased. _Start with the things within the sphere of your own body._ He wonders how that applies to bodies unnaturally animated past the point of their natural death, feeding on the misery of others. He wonders if he had felt that his body was a place he had control over even before that.

 _Be sensible,_ he tells himself, in a voice that sounds a bit like Georgie. _Just go back to bed. Start with that._ He ignores this voice, and tells himself it’s because he doesn’t want to wake Martin, and not because lying in that bed with him right now would feel like sullying something pure.

Jon knows what they think; Georgie, his now-scattered coworkers, probably even Martin to some degree. They think that he pushes away care because he is convinced he does not need it, cannot lower himself to accept it. They think him proud and arrogant, and Jon knows they are right, but not about this.

Jon is aware of his need for care the way one is aware of their lungs’ need for oxygen. It is the largest thing in his vision, when he casts his gaze internally - so he learns over time not to do this.

Jon knows the tidy version of events that exists in the minds of kind people. They think they can offer him some comfort, some warmth, and once he gets over himself and takes it, then he will be glad and sated. Softened around the edges. Less of a bother. 

Jon knows the truth, even if it would shame him to say it. He had hated little kindnesses because they would only whet his appetite for more. Every cup of tea or gentle hand on his arm was an infinitesimal fraction of what he craves. If he started to take them, started to ask for them, he would never stop.

And eventually, those kind people would shift in discomfort. They would find the end of their patience, their indulgence, and watch in disbelief as Jon’s hunger for their kind words and touches only grows. He would watch them struggle to articulate it, for a while. That they were sorry. That they just hadn’t realised, you see. They hadn’t realised anyone could need so much.

Jon has known these things for a very long time. That was the first way he became a monster; a creature of need beyond what those around him could give. Before there was the watcher, the undeserving spared victim, staring uselessly as another was consumed by horrors that he had led along like a piper leading rats, there was that.

Jon grinds his forehead against the glass. Somewhere, he is self-aware enough to know how wrong it is to put Martin’s face on these cruel specters of his imagination, and the shame of that sits heavily in his aching chest. At some point, he becomes aware that he is audibly gasping for air. At some point, he hears Martin’s soft footsteps leaving the bedroom - he struggles to sleep through the night these days, and was intentionally trying to stop himself from spending hours staring up at the ceiling, restless and agitated. Instead Martin paced the length of the safehouse, avoiding the creaking stairs, taking comfort in the concrete facts of this place where they had only ever been safe - the twelve steps from the fridge to the living room door, a real thing to hold onto, the fulfillment of a promise. 

Jon cannot remember if Martin told him this or if he’d plucked it, without meaning, from his mind. He is still thinking about this when Martin pads over and lays a hand on his shoulder. Jon doesn’t say anything, doesn’t consciously alter his expression as he turns to face Martin, and still he is met with ‘oh, _Jon,_ ’ and the warmth of his love’s arms. 

Time slips away from Jon a little. Long hours pass with his head buried in Martin’s lap, gentle hands stroking through his hair. Martin brings him drinks and doesn’t push too hard when Jon won’t take them, pinned by the conviction they’ll clog his throat. This wouldn’t kill him anyway, he knows, but doesn’t that just make him a better meal for Too Close I Cannot Breathe, a never-dying ever-fearing thing desperate for air? These thoughts feel very real in the consuming grey of 3am, and it takes a long time of Martin holding him for their reality to fade back and leave him feeling a little ridiculous and quite parched.

By dawn, Jon has recovered enough to drink tea at their little kitchen table - Martin has a particular fondness for utilising each part of a home for its intended purpose; meals and hot drinks at the table, relaxing on the sofa, reading in the armchair, sleeping only in bed. Martin carries the memories of hiding away in a bedroom whenever he wasn’t needed, eating and napping and rotting there, and is intentionally cultivating a new way of being. Martin treats domesticity like a thing to practice, a thing to treasure, and Martin’s pleasure is warm honeyed joy for Jon, always. 

Jon drinks his tea and tries to ignore when this joy shifts to doubt, wondering again how long he can expect to keep this strange delight of the two of them living side by side. As always, when he tries to voice this thought, it comes out more abruptly than he’d intended.

“How many of these...incidents,” Jon says, looking at the floor because if he looks at Martin he’ll lose his nerve, and he may as well finish the things he starts even if he hasn’t had a good idea since approximately 1993, “would you say you’re prepared to tolerate per week?”

“Wow,” says Martin. “That’s...Christ, Jon, that’s a thing to say, isn’t it?”

There’s a fondness in his voice that Jon doesn’t deserve, and he grimaces and tries to clarify. “Just...a rough idea, I mean. Everyone has...limits, and I find it far easier to operate if I know where the line is from the beginning.”

“Right,” Martin says, putting his mug down decisively. “I get that, sort of. But it sounds a bit like…” He frowns as he tries to find the words, and Jon is briefly distracted by being spellbound. He has no idea how he used to watch Martin do ordinary things and find it utterly unaffecting. “It sort of sounds like you want me to tell you you can have three breakdowns per week, but if we get up to four, I’ll...send you to sit outside like a dog who won’t stop chewing the furniture.”

Jon grimaces again. “Yes, I - I can see how it does, yes.” He carefully doesn’t say that this actually sounds preferable to the potential slow-build of Martin’s resentment. If all interactions came with clearly-defined acceptable parameters, preferably numerical ones - acceptable number of teasing jokes per conversation, number of times he was supposed to let the other person choose what they had for dinner, number of times he should be trying to reach into his chest and pull out the things he was feeling for Martin’s inspection versus simply letting him be - Jon would find that a lot easier to bear.

He is reminded of overhearing peers at school complain of concrete punishments their parents had given them - groundings, confiscation of gaming consoles, being forced to watch over younger siblings instead of playing with their own friends - and feeling oddly envious. He lived his life in the peaks and valleys of his grandmother’s obligation and disappointment, but they shifted all the time with nothing to signal a mistake on his part but an additional sigh or silent tensing of her jaw. Jon has always wanted to be right, but as a consolation he’d gladly take someone telling him exactly what he was doing wrong and what the penalty would be.

“Didn’t mean to send you off ruminating,” Martin says, and Jon comes back to the present, to his ever-growing catalogue of love - Martin still apologises too much, but he teases as he does it, the two of them once again close enough to give each other a hard time without anything shattering, and Jon is so endlessly glad. 

Jon gives him a small smile and impulsively leans over to take Martin’s hand, hoping that’s right. “What I mean - I think - is....that I don’t want this…” - here Jon pauses for at least five seconds - “relationship,” - there is a quiver to Martin’s smile that suggests he is tamping down laughter, and god, can Jon ache with affection later, he was actually trying to say something at present - “to be...unequal.”

Martin tilts his head at Jon, all wondering fondness. “I’m glad, really,” he says. “I appreciate the...concern, for me?”

“But,” Jon prompts.

“But that isn’t in any way true, Jon. You do loads for me.”

Jon looks down at their clasped hands and wishes the Beholding would show him that - all these things Martin thinks Jon is giving him, such that he speaks of them as if it should be obvious.

“But,” Martin says again, “if we argue about that we’ll be here all day, so...go with me for a minute?”

Jon nods. As much as he hates baring his soul, Martin’s responses are always so...Martin that it’s almost worth it.

“Let’s say I was totally fine,” Martin continues, and his smile is only the slightest bit bittersweet. “Not a care in the world, woke up every day raring to go, you know.”

“I’m familiar with the concept of happiness, yes.”

“Yeah. So say I was like that, and you were still...struggling. Really struggling. More than you are now, even.”

Jon imagines this, and the familiar weight of guilt shifts in his stomach. He knows that Martin’s recovery from his time at Peter Lukas’ side is still very much in progress. And yet, this hypothetical vision of them doesn’t feel all that different from their present circumstances. It makes a horrible kind of sense, a world where Martin is finally alright and Jon can’t even get out of bed. 

_Surely you should want that,_ a voice in Jon’s head whispers. _If you really loved him - if you really desired his joy as more than just another thing for you to soak up and consume-_

Martin squeezes his hand, and there it is again - guilt he’s growing weary of, affection he never will. “That still wouldn’t be something you’re doing _to_ me,” Martin finishes softly.

Jon gives a gentle sigh. “That doesn’t sound like a very satisfying existence for you.”

Martin rolls his eyes even as he cradles Jon’s hand like it’s something precious. “Yeah, you know who else it wouldn’t be a ‘very satisfying existence’ for? You! The person actually in pain!”

 _I’m always in pain,_ Jon wants to say, even as he dismisses the thought as melodramatic. Between his growing collection of old wounds and scar tissue, the supernatural hunger for statements that hasn’t been truly satiated in months, and the unpredictable aches and strains his body threw off day by day long before he ever set foot in the Institute, some level of pain and discomfort follows Jon wherever he goes now. He is used to being in pain. He’s not used to someone holding his hand as he suffers through it. 

“Also,” Martin adds, a little rueful. “In my experience, people who focus their time and energy on trying to just...be okay, without ever needing anything from anyone, don’t tend to end up being very okay.”

“That’s a terrible system,” Jon grumbles, rubbing at his eyes with the hand not currently holding Martin’s (little bursts of pressure in his skull, a cascade of aches down his spine, hunger and weariness and a never-ending thrumming fragility).

Martin rests a hand on his arm, and Jon finds himself leaning against Martin’s shoulder. _How many times,_ he wonders again. _How long can I keep this?_ “I’m sure you can file a complaint,” Martin says, fond and amused, “with just...the entire concept of feelings.”

“Mm,” Jon murmurs. The warm pressure of Martin’s crumpled jacket against his skin is the only real thing in the world.

“Can I say one more thing?” Martin says, after a while of just sitting and running his hand in soothing circles over Jon’s back. 

“As many as you like.”

“I...what I was trying to say, I think,” Martin starts, a touch of his old hesitance in his voice before it turns solid and strong. “Me worrying because you’re upset, or hugging you because you had a nightmare, or...trying to work out how to make the world less awful for a minute - all of that, Jon, it’s not a toll I’m paying to be with you. It’s just...being with you.” 

He falls quiet for a moment. From his position leaning against Martin’s chest, Jon can hear his heart beating, the gentle thrum of his breath. “Loving you,” Martin continues, and somehow he is both serious and light, careful and joyous. 

Some part of Jon’s mind begins listing the reasons this logic is inadequate to quiet his concerns. Meanwhile, his treacherous heart hears the care in Martin’s voice, curls up and preens. He’s never understood how someone could be so careful without ever seeming weighed down. How they could be bonded to one another without it ever feeling like a constraint, a bond that made it easier to move and live and think. God help him, if Martin turned him into a poet Jon was never going to forgive him.

“I’m still going to make sure,” Jon says, pulling back so that he can look Martin in the eyes as he says it, “that I’m never so...lost that I forget you. That no matter how much pain I’m in, I don’t forget that there’s more to you than what you can do to ease it.”

Martin stares at him like he’s rewriting the universe. “You say things like that and then wonder whether you do enough for me,” he says, voice small and wondering, and Jon goes easily back into his embrace. 

It occurs to Jon that this is another thing he is learning about how to be loved - touch without intention soothed very little, but touch and intention without understanding weren’t nearly as comforting as what he had in this moment. 

It would be harder to go back now, to being held without having made the shape of his wounds known, without having talked things out until he almost, almost believes that this is something he’s allowed to have. Maybe he won’t have to for a while yet. Within the warmth of Martin’s arms, Jon can almost believe in a world where the things he wants matter.

**Author's Note:**

> I am reachable on [Tumblr (karliahs)](https://karliahs.tumblr.com) and by yelling into the void about how much you love Jon Sims


End file.
